LOOP Browser

The Loop Browser offers you the ability to filter and sort by the parameters of your choice. This is extremely powerful and allows you to quickly and easily ‘focus in’ on the group of samples you wish to browse. For example you can search for for drum loops initially, then a particular producer if you decide you like their loops and then maybe a sub-set of those like acoustic loops to find the loops that match that criteria. You can search for loops by BPM in ranges too based on their original tempo in case you want to find acoustic loops without going too far from their original tempo maybe. There’s also a direct search by name feature of course. Another great feature is that you can click and hold on any sound listed to audition it. It will play back in time with your host application too. NB: We will be improving the browser further in the next update. 

8 RACKs

ONE is primarily based around 8 rack units - each has a groove track featuring the primary loop, it’s groove and audio files of each hit or slice. Another ‘work’ track that has slices placed in the same groove as the master so you can place hits ‘into the loop’. This is ideal for replacing the kick sound in a loop for example. Finally there’s a 32 track step sequencer. Each rack has three main pages - Synth (with 3 sub-pages), Loop and Step editors. Virtually every parameter for the rack (such as volume and panning for example) and the synth parameters can be quickly and easily allocated a MIDI controller and be controlled in real-time for very powerful performance control. You set all the main parameters for the loop here. Loops automatically play on the designated trigger key at their original pitch but you can decide to move them and/or make the play over a range of pitches whilst staying tied to the host tempo. You can also switch the loop off and play the hits from they keyboard from the bottom up on consecutive keys. You can export the MIDI data to your sequencer to play the slices back if you prefer to edit your loop in your sequencer too. If you try control clicking on parameters you’ll often find extra features without having to refer to the manual, for example you can unload your loop from a rack by control clicking on it’s name. You can save your rack patches with edits as you go along as well as any multis you create. You’ll see the Multi display shows details of each rack as selected too, especially it’s original tempo which can be particularly interesting.

LOOP eDITOR

This is where you get into micro-editing your loop when necessary. Slices can be auditioned by click holding on them. You can edit each slice using the icons to the right or by control clicking on them. Mute, reverse, etc. loops as you wish. Slices can be selected individually or in groups and have edits applied to all of them at once to save time. Any edited slice changes colour so you can quickly see which you have changed. They can also have their volume, pitch and panning edited too. Expose the additional ‘work track’ and use this as a great place to try out your ideas. Almost anything is possible, maybe you want to apply FX to a snare within a loop for example - just load the same loop into another rack after muting the snare in the first. Mute everything but the snare on the new track and apply the FX. Pretty much everything you can think of can be done quickly and easily -  edit the whole loop, ‘explode’ the loop and edit elements individually or apply different FX or real-time controllers to each element. There are almost unlimited possibilities.

Step-Time EDITOR

The step-time editor is TR-styled, easy-to-use beat maker which is cool enough by itself. It has 32 slots to allocate hits to and for each to be programmed. However it’s also a really great way to collect your favourite hits too. You can either save them as kits or by type so whenever you need a great kick, snare or electro kit you can always get a set of hits you ‘made earlier’. Even if you never step sequence you should get in the habit of building your own ‘hit sets’ so when you load a loop with a killer snare you add it to your snare set. Next time you load a loop that needs a killer snare load them up on another rack, find the hit and paste it into your loop and you’re sorted. Each hit in a slot can be edited too so you can pitch that snare up a bit if it needs it and it changes colour to remind you you have too. You may decide to just build a huge step sequence but most users will probably use it to add a quick kick pattern ‘over the top’ of an existing loop within one rack. You may prefer to ‘spread it out’ onto a dedicated track, the choice is yours...

FX PROCESSORS

ONE offers 4 FX processors with a wide range of FX patches that you can edit and save as you wish. FX1 and 2 are inserts, 3 and 4 are on sends (also available to the output of FX 1 and 2) so you have quite a decent amount of on-board FX processing power. You can load as many or as few as you need. If you need more than 4 simply create a new instance of ONE and get 4 more. Once again a lot of FX parameters can be controlled in real-time using MIDI controllers and therefore you can often ‘get away’ with simply adjusting parameters as necessary. As you can see there are a huge range of possibilities available for enhancing your loops with the FX alone. Any FX with tempo-related parameters like delays will also automatically sync to the host tempo as the loops do too of course.

GENERAL

ONE is not at all CPU intensive so you can easily employ more than one instance of it if you need to access more than 8 racks at any one time. This is partly the result of lots of clever ‘under the hood’ features such as FX only working when they’re actually being used.

Probably the greatest thing about ONE though is the range of SCALABLE CREATIVITY available. Most users will simply load and replay loops in time and pitch maybe making a few basic edits very quickly whilst others will hone their loops to the nth degree micro-editing each beat, FX and real-time controllers to create something a million miles away from the loops originally used.

ONE is currently in version 1.04. The next update will add the RTAS and Universal VST version for Mac, support of the Apple Loops format and a number of other improvements and is due in the last quarter of 2009. We’ve only focussed on a few key features here to give you a quick idea of ONE’s power. If you want to know more you should download the full user manual and examine the specifications and features in detail.